Maine has hit a new high. Created a new record.

This year, the number of drivers cited by the Maine State Police for operating after their licenses have been suspended has well exceeded 3,000.

Last year, the number of drivers stopped for OAS was 2,044. Those are just the stops made by state police. There are hundreds more made by city and county police across the state.

Losing a license is not something that happens with minor moving offenses. It is reserved for the most dangerous violations, like operating under the influence.

An estimated 72 percent of all Mainers are licensed to drive, which is a pretty hefty number of drivers out there. In a state with extremely limited public transportation options, a lot of people need to drive simply to get around. Too many of them are driving without licenses.

Too many are also driving without insurance, so many that the Secretary of State’s Office can’t track how many, but estimates – based on the number of uninsured drivers involved in accidents – that it is something close to 5 percent of all motorists drive Maine roads without insurance.

So, when one of these uninsured drivers hits an insured driver, it is the insured driver who is forced to pay.

That not fair, and it’s not right.

The problem is so pervasive, the state felt compelled to enact a law last year that requires insurance companies to notify the state when insurance coverage has been canceled so the state can set in motion the process to suspend the registration on the owner’s vehicle, and maintain that suspension until the owner proves insurance has been reinstated.

It’s a lot of paperwork for insurance companies and state government, but it does offer some protection to everyone else on the road that lack of insurance also means a suspended registration.

It would not be a stretch to suggest that motorists reckless enough to drive after their licenses have been suspended and to drive without insurance are just plain reckless.

There is no real functional process of identifying and locating drivers operating after suspension, but the Secretary of State’s Office, in partnership with the Department of Public Safety, launched the Web-based Online Suspended Driver Service last year, through informe.org, to track drivers with suspended licenses by name and location. In the first three months of its launch, 400 public safety officials across the state requested information on nearly 3,500 suspended drivers. There have been thousands of other requests made since.

The problem?

The information is shielded from the public under the 1994 federal Driver Privacy Protection Act, and additional state laws, which prohibit public access to drivers’ names and addresses. We recognize the need for police to have access to this information, but isn’t there equal need for the public to have access, too?

And isn’t there just as great a need for public access to information on drivers who, for whatever reason, are uninsured and still driving around?

It’s not like motorists are driving around in private. We are clearly visible behind the wheel while traveling on public roads. We park our cars in the driveways of our homes, in parking lots where we work, in places where we can be recognized and identified, so the privacy act really doesn’t guarantee our privacy. What it does is shield the poor driving habits of dangerous motorists.

If the driving public had access to this information, and we could recognize violators driving in the lane next to us, we could each do our part to make our roads safer by reporting these drivers.

It’s time to dispose of laws that shield the identities of dangerous drivers.